Quote:Should hospitals give special treatment to patients based on race? The people controlling your health care might think so. The concept of “health equity” is rising in hospitals, universities, and government health agencies.

Health equity’s premise is straightforward: with certain diseases, different races have different health outcomes. Health equity, inspired by critical race theory, dictates that any racial disparity in health or health care is proof of “structural racism” within the health-care system and society more broadly.

Health equity, according to Oregon’s Medicaid program, for example, means “disrupting” and “dismantling” structural (or systemic) racism to ensure equal health outcomes among all races. While eliminating racial disparities is a laudable goal, the chosen methods to impose health equity, in many cases, include intentional racial discrimination.

Here’s how it works in practice: medical experts identify a racial disparity. For example, certain minorities have an elevated risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes. According to the Minnesota Department of Health, this fact alone is evidence of systemic racial injustice and demands racial discrimination in the distribution of monoclonal antibodies (or “mAbs” — a medicine that fights COVID-19). In the name of health equity, Minnesota allocates mAbs based on race.

Specifically, Minnesota says that “race and ethnicity alone … may be considered in determining eligibility for mAbs,” and that non-white patients can be “prioritized for allocation of mAbs.” Minnesota is no outlier: other states add race into the calculus for life-saving treatments.